Touch Pro2 Troubles
On the other hand, the Touch Pro2 is an embarrassing disaster as a media player. To plug in standard headphones, you must attach a stiff, four-inch long dongle that for some reason has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, a non-standard 2.5mm jack, and two USB ports on it. I took one look at that thing, gave up, and hooked up my Altec Lansing BackBeat 903/906 Bluetooth stereo headphones insteadI suggest you do the same.

The TP2 has two built-in media players: a music player you can trigger directly from the TouchFLO 3D home screen, and the standard, confusing Windows Media Player, which you need to use to play videos. The phone played MP3, AAC, and WMA music files fine, but 640-by-480 videos played jerkily. Smaller-format, 480-by-320 videos played fine in full screen mode. I got hideously low frame rates with SlingPlayer Mobile over Wi-Fi, often down to the single digits. HTC's custom-built YouTube application is gorgeous and easy to use, but a three-minute music video had to buffer twice during playback over Wi-Fi. That's not a smooth experience.

The Touch Pro2's 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera took surprisingly pixelated photos with way too many JPEG artifacts, especially in low light. The video mode recorded compressed-looking, washed-out 640-by-480 videos at 20 frames per second. That's a terrific resolution for video recording, but the videos weren't very high quality.

Underlying Windows Mobile issues can make using the Touch Pro2 a hassle at times. The touch screen sometimes didn't register my presses or swipes. If you leave the cozy confines of HTC's apps, you're presented with the tiny little stylus-centric interface elements that have given Windows Mobile a bad name. If you open too many apps, you'll run out of memory just as you can on all Windows Mobile phones, though HTC puts a task manager right up on the home screen to let you easily quit apps.

And the whole thing feels a bit cobbled together; there are two media players on board, two Web browsers, two calendar apps, and two sets of settings screens. In an era where clear, unified interfaces rule, it's difficult to cheer for a split personality.

Conclusions
The Touch Pro2 is the pinnacle of Windows Mobile phones, and it makes a marvelous business communicator. But we still recommend the BlackBerry 8900 as our Editors' Choice on T-Mobile, even though it has a lower-resolution screen and no 3G. Why? Consistency is one big reason: although HTC has done great work dressing up Windows Mobile, you still end up looking at an old, stylus-centric interface if you dig too deeply. The Touch Pro2's media troubles didn't help, either. The Touch Pro2 is an excellent way to stay in touch with people, but it's a new OS away from being a world-beating smart phone.

The Touch Pro2 will be available on August 12th at T-Mobile, and I expect to see other versions of the phone appear on other major carriers throughout the summer. T-Mobile has not announced a price yet.

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PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 9 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts of the daily PCMag Live Web show and speaks frequently in mass media on cell-phone-related issues. His commentary has appeared on ABC, the BBC, the CBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, and in newspapers from San Antonio, Texas to Edmonton, Alberta.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer, having contributed...
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